


No Different

by evening_spirit



Series: Unrelated Supernatural short stories [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evening_spirit/pseuds/evening_spirit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Which hell was more hellish? Sam ponders on his four lonely months. Based on early Season 4, till "Metamorphosis".</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Different

**Disclaimer:**  the characters and the universe of “Supernatural” do not belong to me.

***

 **No Different**

***

After the initial shock of seeing his brother alive had passed, Sam started noticing things. For example how Dean looked like nothing happened. He had died. He had gone to Hell. His body rotted in the ground for four months.

And yet he hadn’t changed.

He could still eat for two, he was cracking jokes left and right, and he was bossing around, the older brother know-it-all.

At first Sam felt sorry for him. Dean had been in Hell, that must have been . . . Must have been beyond anything he could imagine.

But Dean didn’t remember. “Must have blocked it out,” he shrugged it off.

And Sam started feeling jealous.

Because for him those four months were hell. Without Dean, with the weight of guilt, regret, remorse crushing him down. Thinking about what his brother was enduring down there--

That was one thing; another was the slowly emerging awareness that the way he had defended himself before Lilith -- it had been with the use of his psychic powers.

He had promised Dean he would not use them. He hadn’t used them to defeat Lilith and save his brother’s life! And then . . . then he’d selfishly saved himself. As if he needed to fuel his guilt even further.

Ruby explained it to him, told him how he shouldn’t blame himself, how he should use the powers for something good. Taught him to exorcise demons with his mind.

Sam needed Dean more then ever when Ruby was slowly melting his resolve. He needed Dean’s adamant hate of the demons; his ‘they want us dead, we want them dead’. Sam tried to remember Dean’s voice, but it was weaker and weaker and he finally succumbed. He gave up trying to get Dean back from the pit. He gave up fighting against his destiny. He gave up himself.

And then Dean returned.

And he wasn’t changed.

All this time, all those four months Sam had been thinking about how much his brother suffered. Because of his own stupidity to make the deal in the first place, but also because of Sam’s incompetence, his lack of forcefulness, his cowardice. If he had only given in to the powers a few months earlier! Because he had done it anyway, but if he had done it earlier!--

For a while he’d thought he would get Dean back, and that Dean would be broken, because Hell would break one’s soul. He had worried how he would deal with broken Dean. Then he wanted Dean whichever way, even if he would be broken beyond repair, because then he wouldn’t at least suffer any longer. Then he had given up hoping.

And then Dean returned and he wasn’t broken at all.

And Sam realized he was. He was broken and nothing could fix him.

***

Dean was open and honest. He had always been open and honest, heart on his sleeve, but it had never made Sam angry, not like it did when Dean shared every little detail of his encounter with Castiel.

Because Sam was not open and honest, because he’d lied to Dean, and he was lying still and it made him feel like he was the sinful one. Perhaps he was; he was tainted with demon blood after all. Perhaps God thought so too.

God in whom he’d believed all his life, while his brother had not. God whom he prayed to. God had sent an angel to drag Dean from the pit.

Not that Sam wasn’t grateful; he was! He had tried opening the Devil’s Gate, he had tried making a deal, but he had also prayed, and it was the prayer that was answered, or maybe it was a coincidence, but whatever. Dean was back, and he was groped by the Angel of the Lord.

Except that Dean refused to believe it.

“He’s some kind of a demon,” he argued and it sounded like a blasphemy to Sam. “Demons lie! I'm not gonna believe this thing is a freaking ‘angel of the lord’ because it said so!”

Bobby backed up Castiel’s case. “An angel can snatch a soul from the pit. As far as I can tell, nothing else could do that.”

It was a good thing for God’s sake! Why couldn’t Dean just accept it? Something good finally happened to them, to him. Sam wished an angel would come to him, save him from his little personal hell, he would surely be more greatful than Dean!

Instead all he got was more guilt. All the people, all the innocent people he couldn’t save. People who were posessed by demons because demons were after him, because of his blood, and mysterious psychic powers. At least now, with the use of those powers he was able to save most victims. And so what if Meg reminded him that Ruby, the demon who was helping him, was posessing people too! So what if Ruby herself was too scared of an angel to even stick by him!--

And when he managed to convince her that they should continue their quest, because frankly he had nothing else left, the angel came and told Dean all about it, and told Dean that he needed to be stopped!

“Slippery slope, brother. Just wait and see.” Seeing that pain on Dean’s face was worse than the two punches delivered earlier. Because Dean cared, obviously and Sam knew, as he had known for four months that he had made a mistake. He could justify it all he wanted, but deep inside he had known all along it had been wrong.

And now even God made him see that he was wrong.

What did he ever do to deserve this? Other than accepting who he was, but that was rather a result than a cause. Before that, he’d fought against becoming the Yellow Eyes’ tool. After that he’d fought too, he’d tried to take this curse and make something good out of it. All his life had been about trying to make something good out of what happened to them. Only to find out, eventually, that all of his family all his loved ones had been murdered for the sole reason of him becoming Yellow Eyes’ favorite pet!

Dean was all that he had left.

And even that didn’t feel real any more. The connection they used to have was lost and Sam didn’t know if it was him pushing Dean away, or if it was simply the fact that Dean couldn’t comprehend the four months gap separating them. He listened, he nodded, when Sam was telling that he had had to keep going on his own, but deep inside -- he simply wasn’t able to grasp it.

At moments like this Sam wished Dean had some memories of Hell; he wished Dean shared some of his pain. He was alone, and wherever he turned he saw more and more things that separated him from his brother. The memories, or lack thereof. The fact that he suffered losing Dean, while Dean had simply made a deal that one year and four months ago. The demon blood that flew through his veins and didn through Dean’s. “It’s not in you the way it’s in me,” he told Dean. “I can’t make you understand.”

Dean wanted to understand. But there was no way he could.

Sam had to deal with it alone, even though his brother was back, because Dean was unable to see how the world had changed while he’d been gone.

***  
.end


End file.
